Within minutes of pushing through the heavy Dutch door to her place and turning on the lights, Celia’s phone rang.
Ha.
Naturally.
She threw an aggravated glance toward the multitude of large, double-hung windows all along the wall of the converted barn’s great room. Then, with a resigned sigh she kicked off her shoes, grabbed the phone out of her purse and collapsed onto the secondhand roll-arm couch she’d piled high with furry throws and cloud-soft pillows.
If she had to have this conversation, she might as well get comfortable.
“Let me guess,” Celia began by way of greeting. “Pauline called you the moment she saw the lights were on in the barn. Gotta say, if I’d known moving out to the Padgett farm was going to put me under constant surveillance, I would have shopped around a little harder for a place of my own.”
“So what if Pauline called me to let me know you were home?” Lucy Jax’s voice came through loud and clear, torn between irritation and amusement. “It’s not every day that one of the Brody boys drops in on my favorite artist and asks her out to dinner. Especially that particular Brody boy.”
“Trust me, there’s nothing about Ryland Brody that’s boyish. He’s all man, from start to finish.”
“Really? Do tell.”
Good Lord. “There’s nothing to tell, Lucy.”
“I’m not convinced. After all, it’s a quarter to ten. That must have been some dinner you two had, since it wasn’t even six o’clock when you left the shop. Dare I ask what you two have been doing for almost four hours?”
“I wouldn’t want to bore you with the details.”
“Trust me, I wouldn’t be bored.”
“He took me to The Spot, Luce.”
The other woman’s gasp was sharp before there was a beat of condemning silence. “Wow.”
“I know, right?”
“Was he an asshole about it, honey?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know.” With a gusty sigh, Celia settled deeper into the pillows and considered falling asleep right there for the night. “Did you know I can’t even think about that night without getting sick to my stomach?”
Lucy made a stricken noise. “Oh, Cel.”
“It’s true.”
“Don’t beat yourself up about it, please. Everyone does stupid things when they’re drunk.”
“There’s stupid, and then there’s what I did.” Celia stared up at the high exposed beams of the converted barn that was her home, and scowled. “Up until the night when I made a huge ass of myself in front of the entire world, I had a totally normal social life that I took for granted, when I wasn’t going gaga for the Brody brothers.”
“Gaga is a good term for it. Boy-crazy is another. But you were especially insane over the Brody brothers.”
“True enough. But I got cured of that particular insanity that night of my party.” The discomfort of her skin burning with humiliation forced her back to her feet before she set the couch on fire. “Maybe that’s a good thing, since I kind of crushed on all the Brodys at some point in my life.”
“Crushed? Girl, you became a drool machine every time the Brody boys showed up.”
Celia snorted. “A drool machine?”
“Are you denying it?”
“Hell, no. Ry, Fin and Des were my rock stars when I was a teen. I can’t tell you how devastating it was, having Ry smack me down the way he did—figuratively, and literally—right there in public.”
“That man went way overboard,” came the staunch reply. “I had hoped that when Ry showed up at the shop wanting to take you to dinner, he was going to finally apologize for his behavior that night. Did he?”
“Ryland Brody? Apologize?” Celia nearly choked. “Are you kidding? Do the magnificent land barons known as the Brodys even know the meaning of the word?”
“So you grabbed his ass and announced to everyone that he was what you wanted,” Lucy groused. In agonized silence, Celia cringed all over again as the long-ago scene played in spectacular high-def through her mind. “Most men would be flattered that a pretty young thing like you was brave enough to admit she wanted him. But what does that dickhead do? Pulls you to the center of the room so everyone can see, smacks your hands a bunch of times, then finishes with a swat to your bottom.”
Celia squeezed her eyes shut. “Don’t forget what he said with each smack of my hands—naughty children shouldn’t touch what they don’t own. I swear, I have nightmares with those words ringing in my ears, and his disbelieving laugh afterward.”
“Even now I can’t believe he did that. That was way over the top.”
“I should’ve had him arrested for assault,” she grated furiously, then dropped her head into her free hand with a miserable sigh. “But then, of course, Ry would have been well within his rights to have me arrested for the same thing.”
“What? Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Think about it, Lucy. Technically speaking, what I did was sexual assault.”
“For heaven’s sake, Cel, that’s absurd.”
“Why is it absurd? Guys can get sexually harassed and assaulted just like women. That’s what I did to Ry, in front of his brothers and everyone else who was there that night. Would you call it absurd if our roles were reversed, and he was the one who’d done the drunken ass-grabbing?”
Lucy made a frustrated sound. “Not to be too double-standard-y on this, but I think it’s different for men.”
“Not when it comes to wanting to be treated with basic human decency and respect—something I didn’t do when I groped Ry’s ass like a fool. And in all honesty, he barely tapped me. He didn’t hurt anything but my pride, but I’m the one who hurt my reputation. I, a mere commoner, had dared to touch one of the kings of cattle. I guess I should feel lucky I wasn’t tarred and feathered by the whole town for not knowing my lowly place.”
“Honey, you’re not lowly.”
“Compared to the Brody family, with their thousands of acres, and fancy cars, and planes, and mansions, and God knows what else, I’m most definitely lowly.”
“Then everyone else in Bitterthorn is too, Cel,” Lucy murmured, and the sympathy in her tone somehow only made the pain worse. “So...if Ry didn’t ask you out to apologize for being a douche, what was tonight’s dinner all about?”
“He wants me to do some work for Green Rock Ranch. Promo stuff,” she added without enthusiasm, moving to the small home stereo where her MP3 player was docked. Picking up the remote, she cycled through her playlists, too restless to really focus on anything but the bitter upset churning inside. “It sounds like a huge project. Considering what I charge per hour, I’d be an idiot to turn it down, especially since I’m getting ready to pull up stakes.”
“But?”
“But,” Celia acknowledged, “just being around Ry is enough to make me break out in hives. I don’t know if the remembered humiliation is worth the money.”
“Only you can know that for sure,” came the sympathetic answer. “God, sometimes I really hate this little town of ours.”
That made Celia’s brows inch up. “I know why I hate Bitterthorn, but why would you say that?”
“Are you serious? The same reason you’re so determined to get away from here. Bitterthorn’s great, but every now and again something comes up, and people get so damned judgmental without knowing all the facts.”
“A few good souls are still out there, you know,” Celia reminded her, though even she could hear the lack of enthusiasm in her tone. “It’s only the eligible men who, one by one, slowly came to the conclusion that I deserved to be ignored.”
“It’s not fair. There have been way bigger scandals than a sweet drunk girl goosing a handsome guy in a bar—the former mayor cleaning out the city’s coffers and claiming it as severance pay. The arson that took down Thorne Mansion. Hell, Keir Brody bringing his bastard son Des to live with his family, then plowing himself and his wife into the ground with his crappy pilot skills. You giving Ry Brody’s heinie a squeeze is small potatoes. I just don’t get the overreaction.”
“That heinie belonged to a Brody,” Celia reminded her, though even she could hear how flat her tone was. The fact was, she didn’t understand the out-of-proportion response either, but she was done questioning it. “Obviously I overstepped my bounds.”
Who knew what her life would have been like if she’d just kept her stupid hands to herself that night, Celia thought after hanging up and focusing her attention on the playlists. All things considered, her life probably wouldn’t have been that much different. Things were just a lot more...solitary now than they’d once been.
But it was her increasingly solitary life that was becoming intolerable.
The change that had come about had been so subtle at first that she hadn’t even noticed what was happening around her. A few missed calls here, an unanswered wave across a parking lot there. An unanswered smile, or someone abruptly leaving a room or a shop just as she entered.
Little stuff. Hardly noticeable in the grand scheme of things.
But...
She’d noticed.
For a long time she’d tried to convince herself she was being paranoid. But when someone she’d dated in high school wouldn’t even talk to her while fueling up their cars at the local gas station, she hadn’t been able to lie to herself any longer. Slowly but surely over the span of months, the few male friends she’d had in town had vanished off the radar. And it wasn’t just that they weren’t keeping in touch with her, or forgetting to respond to calls or text messages.
They were actively avoiding her.
Once she’d faced the problem, she’d racked her brain trying to pinpoint exactly when it had begun. As far as she could tell, that weird shift in her life had started around the time she’d dared to grab a handful of Grade-A Brody ass.
As fine as that ass was, considering what the consequences had been she wasn’t sure it had been worth it.
If she’d had the money and the work portfolio, she would have blasted the hell out of town when she’d finally realized what was happening. Clearly she’d been rejected—hell, publicly spanked—by Ry Brody, so if he didn’t want her, why would anyone else? No wonder her social life had gone down the tubes. At least in a big city she’d be anonymous. She could reinvent herself. Start all over again.
Just the thought made her smile.
The moody strains of Alicia Keyes’s “Fallin’” murmured through the speakers. After listening for a few beats, she left the remote on the rustic dining table and closed her eyes to let the notes flow over her frayed nerves. Music had always been her personal salvation, but even as she slow-swayed her way to where she’d left her shoes and picked them up, she had a feeling that not even her go-to mood modifier would do the trick.
Ry had her so twisted up she’d be lucky to get to sleep by dawn.
Her phone sounding off again was hardly a surprise, but when she picked it up she frowned at the unfamiliar number. She would have bet her next commission her landlord and friend, Pauline Padgett had decided to tag-team her once Lucy had gotten all the information she could out of her.
“Hello?”
“Pull your curtains right the hell now,” came Ry’s voice, and the clear irritation in it made her spine snap up straight. “For fuck’s sake, woman, anyone could come along and see you rolling your hips all over the damn place with your windows open like that.”
“What? You...oh, goddamn it.” In a blink she tossed everything she held aside and shot out the front door in her bare feet onto the concrete walk. When she spotted Ry climbing out of his truck parked beside her car, her head nearly exploded. “What the hell are you doing sitting in my driveway?”
“Getting a fucking eyeful of an idiot who wouldn’t last five minutes in a big city. You wanna shake your ass, that’s fine by me. I love it. But you damn well better close your curtains so you can pull that sexy shit in private.”
“I was doing it in private, you epic dick,” she bellowed, ready to cork him while embarrassment flooded through her. Seriously, why? Why, of all people, was it Ry Brody who always wound up being her personal audience to life’s most embarrassing moments? “Don’t you have anything better to do than be a pervy Peeping Tom?”
“What the fuck.” For the first time since she’d known him, Ry’s smile was nowhere to be found. “I was doing the gentlemanly thing by making sure you got home safely after our date, only to find that you don’t know the meaning of safe. Close. Your damn. Curtains.”
“That wasn’t a date, that was a business meeting. A meeting, by the way, that was a waste of time for both of us, because I’ve just made up my mind about your proposal,” she rolled on, and the decision was so rock-solid it was almost possible to overlook the tiny hint of disappointment swirling around its edges. “Thanks but no thanks. This right here convinces me that you’re not worth the headache your Pure Angus project would bring to my life. Go away.”
“Oh no, you don’t. You wanted twenty-four hours to make your decision, so that’s exactly what you’re going to get. You will be taking this project on, whether you know it or not, so there’s no point in you saying otherwise.”
“No, I won’t.” She didn’t even realize she was going to stomp her foot in her fury until she did it, and something crunched underneath it.
Crunched...and wriggled.
Her muffled scream coincided with her launching straight up and into Ry’s surprised arms, her own arms wrapping around his neck in a stranglehold.
“What the...?”
“Bug!” It was the best she could do.
“A scorpion? Did you get stung?” In an instant he had her inside, carrying her at a near-run to set her on the huge kitchen island topped with a slab of dark gray granite. “Celia, are you stung?”
“It crunched.” God, God, why didn’t he understand the horror?
“Which foot? The right?” Untangling himself from her strangler’s grip, he picked up her foot by the ankle, bent to examine it...and began to smile. “Looks like a small, garden variety beetle.”
“It’s still there?” Her screech had now reached supersonic levels. “Get it off, get it off, get it off!”
When he burst out laughing, she vowed that one day she would kill him. Slowly.
“Okay, I’m getting it off, though this is your own damn fault.” Still chuckling, he turned and ripped a wad of paper towels off the roll suspended under the weathered-finish cabinets. “This is South Texas, woman. You know better than to run all over creation without shoes.”
“Don’t talk. Bug. Get it off.”
“Yeah, I heard you. Along with the rest of the county.” Grinning, he wet the paper towels and with quick efficiency swept the bottom of her foot clean. “There we go, all better. Wanna see it?”
“Ugh, no! God, just...no, no, no, no, no. Ugh.”
“I’m going to take a wild shot in the dark and guess you don’t like bugs.”
Valiantly she fought off a shudder of revulsion and tried to remember how to communicate without screaming. “The first time I saw a tomato hornworm I almost blacked out. Nearly ended my love of gardening then and there.”
“You still look like you might faint.” Tossing the towels into the nearby trash, he leaned his hands against the counter on either side of her and dipped his head until his face was level with hers. “Want me to carry you to bed, darlin’?”
Her eyes met his, and for a full second her heart stopped beating. The question hung between them, full of such wild possibilities it made her breathless, and a startling flash fire of hungry awareness scorched her skin until she thought she might be glowing with it. Then the memory of being spanked for being a naughty child reared its ugly head, and that heat morphed into prickling humiliation.
Deliberately she shifted her gaze to the spiky tribal tattoo on his right forearm—mainly because no one with a double-X chromosome could breathe when looking into those devastating green eyes—and tried to edge away from him. “No, I’m fine. Except I’m not fine,” she couldn’t help but add, at last giving in to the shudder. “I think I need some antiseptic. And a foot bath. And maybe surgery, because I can still feel it wriggling and crunching. Ugh.”
Another burst of laughter erupted from him, and to her shock he rested his forehead on her shoulder. “God, you’re killing me with the cute.”
He was so close, so warm, so freaking touchable... “Laugh all you want, but I’m not joking. I think I’m traumatized.”
“What you need is a distraction. I got just the thing.” Still chuckling under his breath, he lifted his head and caught her mouth with his.
Whoa.
Time froze.
Everything froze, from the thoughts in her head to the hitherto calm flow of blood in her veins.
Kissing.
He’s...kissing.
Ry is kissing...
Me.
Piece by shocking piece, the reality of the situation filtered into her stunned brain. But by the time she got a firm mental grasp of what was going on, she discovered her body had gone merrily on ahead without her.
While Ry was kissing her, she’d been busy kissing him back.
His lips were warm and bold, and a shockingly good fit against hers. He’d been sneaky, catching her by surprise like that, so there had been no chance to shut her mouth before he’d closed in on her. Not that she would have. She honestly didn’t know how she would have responded if he’d given her even a hint of warning, because in her mind there had been zero chance of this happening.
But here they were.
Kissing.
Somewhere along the way her eyes had closed, allowing her to concentrate on pure sensation. Automatically she tilted her head to change the angle of the kiss, and the action fused their lips so hotly she couldn’t imagine how they’d ever manage to separate. A growl of surprised pleasure at the deepening of the kiss rumbled from his mouth to hers, making her stomach clench with such sweet tension it caused wet heat to bloom between her legs. That slick wetness intensified as his tongue came to dance invitingly over hers, delving so deeply it stole her ability to breathe.
A match thrown into a vat of gasoline couldn’t have lit her up better.
She met the invasion of that amazing tongue of his head-on, delighting so completely in the feel and taste of him that it made her head spin. To anchor herself, she brought her hands up to his powerful shoulders, marveling at how he could feel both chiseled from stone and feverishly hot all at the same time. He was like a living statue, and she was an instant and ardent fan of the masterpiece that he was.
The moment she touched him, it was as though some internal tether that held him back snapped. His hands moved from the edge of the island to slide over her back, as if he needed to memorize the feel of her. That action pulled her closer, deepening the kiss even more, and she whimpered at the growing roughness of it. Logic began slipping away as easily as water through fingers, yet she couldn’t find a way to make herself care about that when his hands were on her and his tongue was promising to do delightfully nasty things to her.
How was it possible she’d made it this far in life without knowing that wanting someone so much could almost hurt?
The juncture of her thighs tingled with the hot rush of arousal, while her pelvic muscles tightened until she ached in places she didn’t know she could ache. They were fast approaching the point of no return, something that set off faint alarm bells, though she couldn’t remember why. Then his hands slid down to brazenly cup her butt, his hips nudging between her knees while he pulled her up against him. The contact of his chest against her breasts jolted through her like electricity, and for a moment the red haze around her brain cleared.
What was she thinking?
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
Such was the extent of his power over her, when all he’d really done was kiss her.
Wow.
She lowered her chin to break the kiss, and struggled to ignore how her lips and the place between her legs throbbed. She had to ignore it, because reality was crashing through her like a wrecking ball, and it wasn’t pretty.
She’d just kissed the crap out of the man who’d slapped her hands, spanked her in public and called her a naughty child. Worse, she’d let him start the whole thing like she was grateful for his damn attention.
Sure, she was lonely. Hell, who wouldn’t be, after becoming invisible to every man around? But this was way too self-destructive, no matter how lonely she was.
“So.” The sound of Ry’s voice, so close to her ear, made her gaze snap to his, only to find he was already looking down at her like he couldn’t get enough of the sight of her. “That’s what it’s like.”
She blinked, her turmoil sinking into confusion. “What? Kissing? Don’t tell me you’ve never kissed anyone. The Brody men are legends in that regard.”
“I’ve never kissed you.” He threaded his fingers through her hair while his gaze held hers with a smoldering intensity that made her burn in shocking ways. “I had no idea a kiss could stop a heart and start it up all at the same time. Wonder what I’ll learn from our second kiss.”
“No. Huh-uh, nope, not happening.” Scrunching up her legs to avoid coming into contact with him—a little late for that, but whatever—she scooted along the island to a point where she could hop off a few feet away from him. “No more kissing, no more touching, no more ass-grabbing. Time for you to leave.” And time for her to remember she was getting the hell out of Bitterthorn, so the last thing she needed now was a complication the size of Ryland Brody.
“I was wondering if you’d picked up on that.” As if he had all the time in the world, he strolled along in her wake as she sped her way to the front door. “This time it was my turn to grab your ass. Both hands, too.”
Good grief, he sounded downright proud. “Congratulations.”
“You should know I’m big on being fair. If you feel like I one-upped you on that score, feel free to go ahead and give my ass a squeeze. I won’t mind this time around.”
Oh, man. “Again with the nope. I’m like a kid who had her fingers burned on a stove. I’m not going anywhere near that thing again.”
“You sure know how to disappoint a guy. Shoes,” he added with surprising sternness when she opened the door wide. “You can’t wander around without any damn shoes on, Cel.”
“I’m not going outside, you are. Good night and goodbye.”
“This is how you thank the man who saved you from the thing that went crunch under your foot?” He shook his head and leaned back against the door jamb, lingering half-in and half-out of her house. “I don’t think I’ll ever forget how you literally jumped into my arms. It’s like you knew without even thinking about it that I was the safest place in the world that you could ever be.”
“I didn’t jump into your arms. I just...jumped.” She hadn’t really thought about it until that moment, and the lurking possibility that he was right bothered her no end. “Would you mind moving so I could shut the door in your face?”
“I’m coming over around nine tomorrow morning to pick you up so you can spend the day at Green Rock,” he announced, ignoring her. It was as if he became selectively deaf whenever she said something he didn’t want to hear. “Bring your music. I like it.”
“My music?” Distracted, she glanced back at the MP3 player. It had changed to Jace Everett’s “Bad Things” when she’d been up on the island, a highly appropriate song, considering she’d wanted to do more than a few bad things to Ry...
She gave herself a mental shake. “Look, I’ve already made my decision. There’s no need for me to spend any time at your ranch to get a feel for it. I’m declining your offer.”
“You wanted twenty-four hours. Twenty-four hours is what you’re going to get.” Before she could react, he caught her by the nape and tugged her close for a quick, breath-stealing kiss. “Nine o’clock, darlin’. Lock up behind me, and don’t forget to close your curtains.”
Then he was gone, leaving her with the realization that there were some people in the world who honestly didn’t know how to take no for an answer.